Heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) requires that a thermal source be brought into close proximity to a magnetic writer. HAMR designs utilize an intense near field optical source to elevate the temperature of the storage media. When applying a heat or light source to the medium, it is desirable to confine the heat or light to the track where writing is taking place and to generate the write field in close proximity to where the medium is heated to accomplish high areal density recording.
In addition, for heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) one of the technological hurdles to overcome is to provide an efficient technique for delivering large amounts of light power to the recording medium confined to spots of, for example, 50 nm or less. A variety of transducer designs have been proposed for this purpose.